FEROCIOUS KARATE STREET FIGHT

Is there adequate space to change clothes before and after class? Are the mats of high-quality, and free from wear and damage? Are wall pads up to protect you on the edge of the mat? Is the mat space big enough for an average-sized class to grapple without rolling into each other?

There are several downsides to not working on deceleration:

Inertia becomes your master. Once you generate momentum with a given technique, inertia comes into play. If you don’t work on deceleration, you become inertia’s slave: you can’t stop even if you want to. This has consequences, see the following bullet points.
You become vulnerable. If you can’t handle inertia, you risk getting pulled off-balance by your techniques when you throw them full power. This leaves you wide open to counters.

You become even more vulnerable. When you first fight inertia and try to get control of your techniques, you’ll lose precious time between the end of the technique and the time it takes to recover to a position where you can attack or defend again. That gives your opponent some more opportunities to counter you because you will be in between attack and defense: focused on retrieving the limb you just used.

You are slower than you need to be. Fights are measured in fractions of seconds; even a beginner can throw three attacks in one second. That means that every tenth of a second you waste fighting inertia is time you cannot use to either attack or defend. Which slows you down overall because you always need extra movements to recover in between techniques. This in turn makes you slow not because you move slow, but because you waste time doing movements that shouldn’t be necessary.

Inertia becomes your master. Once you generate momentum with a given technique, inertia comes into play. If you don’t work on deceleration, you become inertia’s slave: you can’t stop even if you want to. This has consequences, see the following bullet points.
You become vulnerable. If you can’t handle inertia, you risk getting pulled off-balance by your techniques when you throw them full power. This leaves you wide open to counters.

Important questions to ask yourself, and the school’s owner, include:

How well does the facility’s air conditioning & ventilation system work?
How often are the mats cleaned?
How are they cleaned? Vacuumed, mopped, steam cleaned?
How strict are you about enforcing clean uniforms, equipment & trimmed nails with your students?

In fact, the best martial arts conditioning workout is to perform the art itself. Just like boxers can’t dispense with boxing training — hitting the bags, sparring, shadow boxing, etc — martial artists can’t neglect their skill training in favor of a kettlebell workout that doesn’t involve specificity to a martial artist’s goals.

The ways in which to prepare for a big fight, whether in the competitive arena or some plain fist smacking with a local bully, are simply too numerous to count. There are preparations involving food intake and diet, preparations for strength and muscle growth, mental planning, and everything that goes in between. A successful fight requires the right preparations, done and applied at the right intervals, and in any way which works best for the fighter.

Skill building and training is definitely in the picture. Well, who fights really without training well? That’s asking for a heavy beat down and week-long injuries. Since we are talking in general about a proper fight, and non-lethal combat at that, we’ll be talking briefly about attitudes and mentality for an upcoming fight.

Any human undertaking involves mental hurdles. Even those challenges which appear to be purely physical have, as we have experienced, a whole mental dimensional to them. How can something so physical be so mental and emotional at the same time? Obviously, our minds are part of every undertaking, so what in reality are purely physical activities are actually mental challenges. In all sports, having the right mental outlook, perception, and expectations are the keys to winning. This is also true in a big fight, where physical efforts, exertion, and exhaustion take their toll on the morale, emotions, and mental fortitude of a fighter. So the mental aspect of a fight is not something to be taken for granted.

It is a must that a fighter focus intensely on the fight beforehand, and not load up the mental state with much distractions. In a big fight, it pays to be “hungry”, enraged, or fired up with the thought of defeating the opponent. However, within the fight itself, it is extremely important to remain calm and let the head do the thinking (and the occasional head butting). An overly emotional combatant is prone to many mistakes, a definite recipe for losing. In a practical fight, they say, one needs to be a scientist first before being an artist. Keeping your mental state calm enables you to control the fight from the outside or inside, without resorting to drastic measures that could make you lose.

About The Author

Mr Miyagi

Karate Japanese pronunciation: [kaɽate] is a martial art developed on the Ryukyu Islands in what is now Okinawa, Japan. It developed from the indigenous martial arts of Ryukyu Islands (called te (手?), literally "hand"; tii in Okinawan) under the influence of Chinese martial arts, particularly Fujian White Crane. Karate is now predominantly a striking art using punching, kicking, knee strikes, elbow strikes and open hand techniques such as knife-hands, spear-hands, and palm-heel strikes. Historically and in some modern styles grappling, throws, joint locks, restraints, and vital point strikes are also taught. A karate practitioner is called a karateka.